A toast to the roast.. meet Essex’s coffee couple

A toast to the roast...meet Essex’s coffee couple from Coffee Officina

IF you love coffee, then there’s a little business in Matching Tye that you need to familiarise yourself with.

The Coffee Officina – a workshop and laboratory where coffee is roasted, brewed and supplied – was founded in 2013 by Marcella Fiori, 32, and Rory Lloyd, 31.

The Chelmsford pair now send their coffee all over the world, from Germany, Italy and Spain to Singapore, New York and Australia.

But how did it come about?

“We were both working in London before starting The Coffee Officina,” explains Marcella.

“Rory has been working in the coffee industry for more than ten years and before Coffee Officina he was working for a well-known London coffee roastery.

“I worked as lead designer for a design agency and specialised in interior and product design.

“While designing and planning numerous cafes and restaurants in the UK and internationally, I saw a gap in the market and convinced Rory that it was time to start a coffee roastery to meet the demand of a fast-growing industry.

“We were roasting green coffee in our kitchen for us to drink at home and share with friends. The more coffee we roasted, the more that we could see a business forming and a gap in a growing market.

“We wanted to merge our two passions, coffee and design, into one concept and we saw a gap in the market for a more contemporary approach to roasting and supplying coffee.

“The first thing we created was our signature espresso blend, the Fiori Espresso. This coffee was born out of a desire for something different. When we created this blend we were inspired by the Italian way of drinking coffee. We wanted to create an espresso blend that reminded us of a traditional Italian espresso, but with a more contemporary taste.

“In the very early days of the Coffee Officina, we were roasting from our flat in East London. The very first batches of coffee were roasted on a 500g hot air roaster on our tiny balcony!”

Officina means ‘workshop’ in Italian. How does it work, I ask?

“The first part of our process is to find the right green coffee,” says Rory. “We source coffees from all over the world, including Central and South America, Africa and Asia. We have recently been to Brazil, where we selected coffee for the this year, including two of which that are available in our online shop at the moment.

“After sourcing, comes roasting, where all our knowledge and experience comes into play. So much work has already gone into the coffee beans at origin, so it is our job to show off the unique flavours that are locked inside the green coffee.

“Every type of coffee needs to be treated differently in the roaster, so we adjust our roast profile accordingly to the particular coffee. After 24 hours of resting, we then pack the coffee and send out to our wholesale and online customers.

“We do everything ‘in house’, from sticking labels on retail bags and stamping our logo with our hot foil machine to boxing up our coffee and delivering straight to the cafes we supply.”

So, they must be pretty big coffee drinkers?

“We are both pretty big coffee drinkers, but also very fussy coffee drinkers,” muses Marcella.

“We also have quite rigorous quality control processes, so some days when we are doing a lot of tasting, our coffee consumption can be very high!”

Is there any coffee you don’t like/wouldn’t drink/wouldn’t sell I wonder?

“The kind of coffee that we supply makes up for a very small amount of world coffee production. As long as the quality is high, coffee is traceable and production is sustainable we are happy to work with a particular coffee and plantation/farm,” says Rory.

“But there are certain coffees, for example the Kopi Luwak, an Indonesian coffee which has been processed through the digestion of a Civet cat, that we would not work with.

“A lot of the time, this type of coffees are very unethical and cats are kept in captivity and force fed coffee cherries. This is a part of our industry that we are very against.”

But what actually makes a coffee a good coffee?

“Being able to control the variables in any stage of coffee production and preparation is a good place to start,” explains Rory.

“For brewing coffee it is important to get the ratio of coffee to water right. We start with a general rule of 15g of coffee to 250g of water. After that, other things like grind setting, brewing method, water quality and temperature make a big difference in making a good cup of coffee.”

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